


Two Halves of One Whole

by sam_dean_and_me



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Color Blindness, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Gen, M/M, Platonic Wincest, Soulmates, Spoilers, canon soulmates - Freeform, canon wincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27823945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_dean_and_me/pseuds/sam_dean_and_me
Summary: After the barn and before the bridge, everything in between is a blur. Why? Maybe because Sam literally can't sense the details with half of himself missing.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Two Halves of One Whole

**Author's Note:**

> Horribly sleep deprived, so any and all mistakes are Sam and Dean's fault. If you've stopped crying, you're probably a legend:(  
> I miss my boys 😭

He doesn’t notice it, at first. When he goes to Austin for that hunt, nothing seems out of place, except for the fact that everything is wrong. It’s him in the driver’s seat, and car is empty. Miracle is there but that doesn’t fill the void.  
Nothing will fill the void.  
It’s only later, the second, or third hunt- Sam isn’t sure- that he notices. The girl is croaking, clutching her stomach with both hands, the demon inside of her already downstairs, and Sam knows there’s a wound there, where his knife went in, sharp and smooth; but the blood. It isn’t red, isn’t any particular color that he recognizes. It’s a shade of some grayish green, and Sam only knows it’s blood because he knows it can only be blood.  
He doesn’t pay it much attention, because it’s dark and 2 am in the morning and everything is dead anyway, died the second that puff of warm air carried Dean’s life out of his body and right onto Sam’s face. It’s an irony, really, because the lore says that gesture “is a passing of life from Dean to Sam”, but in reality it was actually what sucked Sam’s life out right along with Dean.  
So yeah, everything is dead now and nothing has any color, except for the fact that it’s not just a  
metaphor. There is literally no color. The sky, grass, things, everything turns the same color, different  
shades of a sick blurred mixture of grey-green.  
It’s a relief, almost, because it means that every time he looks at his left hand, he doesn’t have to see it  
bloodied with Dean’s blood anymore, his life leaking out slow and warm and Sam carrying the evidence.  
But he’s Sam Winchester and life isn’t that easy on him. Even when everything goes uncolored, he can still see Dean’s blood; on his hand and in his eyes. On the plus side, he can at least see the impala.  
Doesn’t know why; maybe it’s because baby isn’t a “thing”, maybe something else, but every color on her is vivid and bright and sometimes they sting his eyes, his brain panging and jarred.  
It makes hunting difficult- impossible- because how can he save and kill if he can’t differentiate between red and yellow and blue?  
He tries, reads and searches and asks, and some old wrinkled lady in a fucking fortune telling shop gives him an answer. It makes sense, so he takes it, but the look of pity she throws his way makes him want to break something.  
“Soulmate” she says, eyes narrowed and brows bunched up. “You lose half your soul, you lose half its functions.”  
And yes, okay, she has a point. And once he knows what to look for, there is actually a surprising amount of literature on this. If only Dean could see him right now, sitting in a library with literatures on “soulmates” surrounding him. He’d never live it down, get teased and laughed at for about thirty years straight. It hurts. The thought hurts. Squeezes his chest to the point where he has to close the ancient book and drop his forehead down on the back of it. Deep breathe in, long breath out, and there’s nothing he wants more than to stop breathing, to hear that teasing laughter once, just once.  
‘Promise me Sam.’  
“Fuck you, asshole” he croaks out.  
The summery is that colors come from one’s soul. All the scientific logic in his brain laughs at the information and numbers- wavelengths and frequencies pop up. But science also says that Sam Winchester is alive, while Sam Winchester knows otherwise.  
“Soulmates” he hears again, this time in Ash's voice from all those years ago. Feels like it’s from another lifetime, another him, and well, that’s true.  
So, Dean was the part of Sam’s soul that was the colors, and now that part is gone and so are the colors.  
And he’s ok with that, he really is. It’s not like he really looks at anything anymore. But yeah, it makes hunting dangerous and pointless, so he stops. It’s not as hard to do as he thinks it should be, and that also has something to do with Dean.  
Everything has something to do with Dean, and since Dean is gone, a little something from everything is gone too.  
But, “What am I supposed to now?” he asks the Impala.  
‘You always keep fighting’ rings his ears, loud and clear, clearer than any real sound around him.  
“For what?”  
He gets the answer about sixteen months later, in the form of a six pound one ounce bundle that cries and croaks and cries some more, so of course he names it Dean.  
Then he notices the other missing things. Like how the giggles of his little toddler don’t jingle as much as they should, how when he clutches infant dean and breathes in deep, he can’t quite smell the “baby smell”. But he knows they’re there, and that’s enough.  
It makes diagnosis difficult, the lack of color meaning that he doesn’t notice when his vomit stops being just bile and takes a bright shade of red. By the time they figure it out, it’s already too late. His son doesn’t take it well, and Sam gets it. He does. But that doesn’t mean his insides aren’t sighing in relief.  
Soon, they say.  
On the bridge, when Dean turns to him with a smirk, “Heya Sammy” still lingering in the air between them, Sam is momentarily blindsided. Dean is so bright; soaked in cream skin and sparkling green eyes and cinnamon freckles, spikes of hair and the sharp tip of his nose. It’s like spending hours in a dark room and then suddenly being splashed with floodlights. _Years _his brain supplies, and yeah.__  
The hug, the hug. Warmth and Dean’s cologne and the thud thud of two hearts that don’t really exist but somehow are the loudest things here, heard loud and clear over the rushing water and the chirping birds and he knows Dean agrees.  
It’s beautiful, everything. Blue and green and Dean’s eyes two neon spots burning his skin. So he stands there, tucked safely close to the other half of his soul, and watches colors for the first time in thirty years.


End file.
